


Life

by Luzula



Category: due South
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Community: ds_snippets | dsc6dsnippets, Gen, Graduate School, Science, Xenobiology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-10
Updated: 2014-02-10
Packaged: 2018-01-11 20:48:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1177754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luzula/pseuds/Luzula
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Xenobiologist!Fraser.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life

**Author's Note:**

> This is backstory for the SF AU I am psyching myself up to write. Er, I hope the technobabble is at least vaguely convincing.

"And I expect the analysis of those samples will be done by tomorrow?" Professor Thatcher said.

"Are you a slave or a Ph. D. student?" Chen muttered in Mandarin from the other lab desk. Thatcher frowned suspiciously at him.

Fraser glanced at Chen quellingly. "I...yes, of course, Professor."

Thatcher swept out in her white lab coat. Fraser looked at the screen of the molecular imager, with its complicated tangle of e-RNA and pseudo-proteins. "E" for Europa, of course, on whose surface they were, in a hermetically sealed station shielded from the cold and the radiation of the Jupiter system. Sometimes he wondered why he'd left the open vistas of his home planet for this, when only sterilized probes could enter Europa's sea with its alien life.

"She isn't a bad advisor," he told Chen in Mandarin. "No, really, she's _brilliant_. And she requires brilliance from me. I'm not sure I can deliver, but why else am I here, if not to try?"

"Brilliant, huh," Chen said with a knowing smile. Fraser blushed.

Well, he was used to exacting teachers, at any rate. He was glad his grandparents had insisted he learn both standard Mandarin and English, though he spoke both with an accent, his native language being the Chinese-English-Inuktitut creole spoken on Pigivuq. But his grandparents were terraformers, oriented towards practical applications of the life sciences, such as developing new strains of _Salix_ tolerant of high CO2. Professor Thatcher's work was pure xenobiology, the study of alien life for its own sake. It was what he'd wanted, too, and it's what he was getting.

"Right," he said, taking a deep breath.

"Guess it'll be a late night," Chen said.

"Yes. I'd better get on with it," Fraser said, sliding into his chair and adjusting the focus on the molecular imager. 


End file.
